“But there was nothing. No village or town as far as her eyes could strain. Nowhere for her saviours to come from and take her to; just fields and trees and the weeping arc of the river Greave all the way to the horizon. Just like in the books, Greaveburn was all there was; building and building until streets were foundations, roofs were floors, constantly climbing away from itself. now that Abrasia saw it, her dream of escape crumbled completely like an ancient map in her fingers. The horizon was the world's edge and there was nothing beyond it but mist and falling.Greaveburn stood alone on this little circle of earth, the river running around and into itself like a snake eating its tail. And Abrasia was doomed to watch the sun and stars trade places for all eternity.”

“The horizon was indistinguishable from the inky black, which fell upon the desert like a sorcerer’s mantle shot through with diamonds. The stars were so tiny, so far away, and yet, at the moment, with her fingers curled around his, he almost felt as though he could reach up and snag one by the tail.”

“As if this were a signal to her, Naoko stood and glided toward the head of the bed, gown rustling faintly. She knelt on the floor by my pillow, eyes fixed on mine. I stared back at her, but her eyes told me nothing. Strangely transparent, they seemed like windows to a world beyond, but however long I peered into their depths, there was nothing I could see. Our faces were no more than ten inches apart, but she was light-years away from me.”

“She stood in the high pines along the eastern edge of the camp that ran downhill toward the river. She had a place there. A small clearing just above the riverbank where the earth was carpeted in brown pine needles, and the trees were very tall and very old, and there, in that same place, were some young pine saplings with their feathery, light green needles, fernlike in their delicacy, fanning out silently in the still cool air with the old alligator bark of the ancient trees behind them and the long golden river sliding over the rocks beyond. In this place, the black branch of one thick old tree reached out far over the river, and its smallest branches trailed along the surface like fingers, and the light fell and glittered wonderfully on the water, and she could feel her God there, inside of her, could be gentled and calmed by Him as she watched the sun pour down in long shafts and then splinter out across the the surface of the water like shards of a shattered mirror. She rested her hand against the rough trunk of the tree and then leaned her whole body against it, soaking in the silence, the curious comfort of leaning up against something so old, listening to the never-ending movement of the water.”

“To exhaustion and beyond they prayed, to that glittering place where the flesh dies and is born again, where all is agony, and finally, just as La Inca was feeling her spirit begin to loose itself from its earthly pinions, just as the circle began to dissolve--”

“Now was too big, like a giant dark planet coming up over the horizon. she wanted then. That's what he'd seen that day, a brightness with darkness all around, watching her, as if she were glamorous, as if she were a rare and mysterious creature.”